


Rune

by AshVee



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dark Stiles, Emotionally Constipated Humans, F/M, King of Hell, Language, Like a lot of language, M/M, Magic Stiles, Multi, Rune Magic, Stiles-centric, cameos galore, emotionally constipated werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-06 02:15:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 16,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8730883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshVee/pseuds/AshVee
Summary: Stiles Stilinski was sick of it...all of it. The ignorance and the half-measures. He was mostly sick of people expecting something completely impossible. His magic is rooted in study and knowledge, in runes and intention. He can't raise the dead, even if he did that one time. With the Hale pack in trouble and Peter Hale of all people coming to ask for help, Stiles gets pulled back into Beacon Hills drama.





	1. The Trouble With Magic

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Bonus points and a cameo of either themselves or their favorite character from another piece to the *first* person to identify the not-so-sneaky cameo in here.

Chapter One: The Trouble With Magic

 

The thing that Stiles hates about magic isn’t that it’s bitching difficult to master. It’s not the inherent buzz during and the slow receding ache after. It’s not even that getting carried away, falling into that intoxicating sway of magic could cost him his life if he ever overindulged. 

 

It’s the fucking ignorance of everyone else. 

 

Scott, for all that Stiles sees him now, always has this vague look on his face that Stiles is cheating. Like he’d somehow gotten through a criminology bachelors and masters in five years because of the magic. One night junior year, Scott had come over and they’d gotten shit-faced because that’s what you did in undergrad with a bro-that-was. Scott had gone on a twenty minute rant about how much harder school was for him than it was for Stiles because he didn’t have magic. 

 

It wasn’t just Scott. 

 

Lydia had assumed that because he’d been practicing for the better part of a year, he could somehow wave a wand and cure her mother’s pancreatic cancer. Stiles had tried to explain for a month why his magic didn’t work that way. In the end, they’d buried her mother at the end of their senior year, and Lydia hadn’t spoken to Stiles since. 

 

The rest were just as clueless. 

 

The Sheriff-because Stiles wouldn’t call him Dad when they were so angry with each other-hadn’t understood at all. There had been discussions about the “dark” and the “light” and questions so very reminiscent of a bad Harry Potter fanfiction that Stiles had blown his stack. Maybe he shouldn’t have taken the pile of books he’d given the Sheriff to explain and thrown them at his head. Maybe he shouldn’t have told him that he wasn’t Hermoine fucking Granger. Maybe he shouldn’t have stomped out that day after graduation when Sheriff Stilinski had asked him about what he planned to do with his life because chasing supernatural baddies wasn’t a calling. 

 

Maybe they all should have bought a vowel. 

 

In the end, it’s Erica that breaks his heart the most. She and Boyd had been a gift from a vaguely flamboyant demon. Stiles had found himself in an upside down little backwater where demons were going around helping people and normally peaceful spirits were tearing livers from abdominal cavities. Stiles had put everything to rights by accident really, breaking the spell that had been put into the soil by an angry Hunter of all things. The demon had apparently had some sway, and he’d offered Stiles two favors. Stiles had never been a small minded thinker. Erica and Boyd had stepped out of a very confusing rip in the fabric of space, looking very much the same as they’d been the last time Stiles had seen them, except older...and dirtier. Initially, for the span of a few moments and the demon calling Stiles by name, they were ecstatic. Then the anger had come in riotous, explosive bursts. 

 

Stiles should have helped them that day in the basement. 

 

Stiles should have pulled them out of Purgatory-whatever the hell that was-sooner.

 

Stiles should have used his magic to at least see that they were at peace in the afterlife. 

 

Stiles? Stiles was fucking sick of the bullshit. Which he probably shouldn’t have told them within fifteen minutes of their rather unexpected, but not unwelcome, return to the land of the living. He’d done a lot of things since graduation that he probably shouldn’t have done, but he was sick of the ignorance and the narrow-minded, small-town thought processes everyone in his life seemed to have. 

 

Stiles’ magic? What he was actually capable of doing with his magic? It wasn’t necromancy. It wasn’t some magical speed reading or Harry Potter bullshit. Stiles’ magic was in careful study, in knowledge and application. It was as powerful as his own mind could twist the old words and the runes. 

 

You needed a river frozen? Fine. Isa was a dangerous rune, but Stiles knew the restrictions and the advancements in his own thoughts. Give him an hour and that water’s going to wish it was somewhere around the equator. 

 

You wanted to ensure safe travel-or even instantaneous travel-from one place to the next? Rhaido had been his best friend for years. A quick runic sketch and Frodo could take the ring to Mordor without so much as a scratch. 

 

Stiles and Algiz could put a shield around you as strong as anything you’d want. 

 

You know what he couldn’t do? Raise the motherfucking dead. Or ensure the final resting place of a soul was in some sunny beer garden where Nickelback never came on the radio. He just couldn’t do it. 

 

So Stiles? His biggest bitch with magic wasn’t really with magic. It was with the assholes in his life that he’d held dear and who hadn’t understood. In three years since graduation, he hadn’t seen any of them. Hell, he hadn’t heard from any of them in three months, which, in hindsight, should have been his first clue.


	2. Peter Hale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles gets a call from Peter Hale, asking for help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I’ve established that chapters for this are going to be fleeting 500-1500 words and probably posted daily Monday - Friday. A longer chapter will probably mean I’ll skip the next day, etc.

Stiles hadn’t seen anyone from Beacon Hills in three years, two months, and...fuck what day was it again? 

 

It didn’t much matter, because his good luck streak had been cut short. Peter Hale sat in front of him, absent the deep v-necks that he’d so very much grown attached to when Stiles saw him last. In fact, the Peter Hale currently sitting on a park bench, head in his hands, and thinner than Stiles knew a werewolf could get, was nothing like the Peter Hale that Stiles remembered. 

 

Perhaps the most damning thing really, was that Peter hadn’t done so much as look up when Stiles had let Perthro go and allowed the world around him to recognize his existence again. The rune of femininity hadn’t appealed to him at first, back when he’d been learning, but then the rest of it, the more subtle nuances, the hidden things and the mystery to the rune itself...well, that had been worth the addictive tendencies that came with using it. 

 

Peter only looked up when Stiles lit a cigarette and blew the smoke toward the werewolf’s downturned head. 

 

“Stiles!” Peter said, shooting to his feet. The wolf looked sick, drawn thin. 

 

“You called me,” Stiles said with a nod. Peter had left a short, mysterious voicemail asking Stiles to come back to California, but not Beacon Hills. He’d been adamant about not going home, which was, really, why Stiles was here, in a little park three towns over. 

 

“I didn’t...Scott didn’t think you’d come.” 

 

“I’m here.” Stiles didn’t hate Peter. He didn’t really have any feeling about the were-zombie beyond simultaneous vague amusement and annoyance. He waved a hand toward Peter in a go-on gesture, the move sending ash falling against his knuckles and to the ground. 

 

He hated the taste of tobacco, which lead him to menthols. It wasn’t like it was a daily thing, he’d convinced himself. Just when he’d needed something to stave off the cloying ache of Pethro’s addictive counter-qualities. 

 

“We...have a problem,” Peter said, eyes sliding left and right beyond Stiles. The Peter Hale he remembered was there, in that sly, suspicious edge. As if remembering himself, the wolf straightened, pulled his over-large clothes more fittingly to his chest, and gestured further into the park, away from the children and soccer mom’s by the playground. 

 

Stiles went without preamble

 

“Lydia disappeared four months ago,” Peter said. He cut to the chase, which, Stiles supposed was the only way that anyone from Beacon Hills would get his attention for very long. The fact that Stiles, no matter how Lydia felt, still cared about the brilliant bitch was probably the only other reason he was still listening. “The rest...I don’t know, but it started with Lydia. I only got a coll when Malia disappeared two weeks ago. Derek and Cora came up to help, but...They’re gone. I can’t get to them without help...without magic.” 

 

“Who all’s missing?” Stiles asked. 

 

“Everyone,” Peter said with a shrug. “I don’t know if you know who all was Pack in the end, but-”

 

“Save me the story of Scott McCall’s Wayward White Knights,” Stiles said. He didn’t want to hear who all Scott had burdened with the gift since Stiles had left. The look Peter gave him was somewhere between amusement and devastation. 

 

“Malia is my daughter,” Peter said firmly. “I don’t care about anyone else, but…”

 

“Derek and Cora are your nephew and niece,” Stiles said. “You just writing off the rest of your family?” Stiles didn’t know if it mattered, really. He hadn’t seen either Hale since they’d high-tailed it to Arizona or New Mexico or fucking Tel Aviv for all Stiles knew.

 

“I’m prioritizing my wishlist,” Peter says, a wry smile on his lips. “Malia, Cora, Derek. I just need help getting them out..” 

 

“And why does the big bad wolf need help from someone like me?” Stiles asked. 

 

It was a fair question. Stiles had gone away to college and hadn’t come back. What he did now, this supernatural watch-dog bullshit, was more Hunter than anything else. The magic gave him an edge, but it didn’t make him a friend or an enemy to the supernatural community. 

 

“Because I woke up three days ago in a djinn nest,” Peter said. There was defeat in his posture, humiliation in every line of him. 

 

“What did the big bad genie make you see, Petie?” Stiles asked. There would be no response, and it was mostly spite that formed the words. 

 

“Maliha, Cora-”

 

“Derek,” Stiles said. “Got it.”


	3. The Djinn Bin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles investigates a bar Peter points him toward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of non-graphic description of death and bodily decay here. If that's not your thing, maybe skip it?

Stiles stood on a narrow, cracked sidewalk in front of a little dive bar. The thick, pungent smell of beer and cigarettes was strong, even out in front of the building. 

 

The Djinn Bin flashed in green neon, and Stiles stood there a long moment. It couldn’t be that fucking easy. A middle aged man stumbled out of the bar, gave Stiles a side-eye and proceeded to take a leak right on the street. 

 

“Charming,” Stiles said, rolling his eyes as he walked past him and into the bar. 

 

Inside was about as much as he expected. A few old-timers at the bar turned to look at him when he entered, but for the most part, it was a quiet, smokey hole in the wall. If Stiles hadn’t smelled the stink of Djinn magic before, he’d have sworn he was in the wrong place. 

 

“What can I get you?” the man at the bar asked, a little to interested in Stiles. He sat on the stool, considered the tap a long moment, and ordered a Gin and Tonic to be a smart ass. The man gave him a smile and went about making his drink. 

 

“I’m looking for a friend of mine, used to come in here?” Stiles said, loud enough that the two old-timers and the bartender could hear. 

 

“Not much of anyone comes in here religiously other than what you see,” the bartender said, an edge to his voice, a pressure that would have been convincing if Stiles hadn’t heard it before. 

 

“Yeah,” Stiles agreed. He sipped at the drink put in front of him, nursing it for the better part of thirty minutes before paying with a debit card. The bartender gave him a dirty look for putting a three dollar drink onto a card, but he handed him a signature slip and a pen none-the-less. 

 

Stiles smiled down at the slip, flipped it over, and drew the rune he needed. 

 

“Would you take a look at this for me?” Stiles asked. “My eyes aren’t what they were when I was a kid.” 

 

“You’re still a kid,” one of the old-timers groused, but the bartender was looking at Laguz, and Stiles whispered the name. Like most of the runes Stiles started out with little use for, Laguz had proven far more useful than just for manipulating water. The rune was normally a fairly positive thing, but reversed...well, Stiles had read stories of beginners driven mad with fear from using Laguz improperly. 

 

It made a bitchin’ distraction. 

 

It also doubled as a rune for finding the hidden things in the world, which...also pretty bitchin’. 

 

The back stairwell wasn’t exactly hidden, but there was a stack of crates in front of it. The smell of sickness and decay was strong as Stiles neared it. If he’d had stayed in the bar, like any of the other patrons, he’d have probably never even caught wind of it, but right there, in close proximity...it was the unmistakable smell of the dead and dying. 

 

Below, there was none of the falseness of the bar above. There were bodies, some nothing but bone and decaying cloth, others still with flesh clinging to the sinews and ligaments beneath. Stiles lost his gin and tonic in the corner. 

 

The living were toward the back, sitting or standing or laying, eyes closed as their minds were lost to the lies the djinn had placed in their minds. That was the tricky part of pulling a person from the djinn-dreams. They had to want to come out more than they wanted to stay inside. Whatever it was that Peter had seen...it was a strong person that could look at everything they ever wanted and turn it down.

 

Stiles didn’t have to make them all want to wake. Maybe he was a cheater, afterall. 

 

Berkano was a tricky thing, mostly because the side effects, the counter effects that were always thrust back upon Stiles, were more difficult to deal with than the itch for a cigarette from Pethros or the buzzing thrum of energy that came from inverting Laguz-or even the vague sense of fear that was ever present after using the rune for its intended purpose. 

 

Berkano had the tendency to make him careless, reckless. Once, he’d liberated the mind of a woman caught in the thrall of an incubus and ended up driving down a winding backroad in the Smoky Mountains, lights off, windows down, screaming along to the wind and the rain and Def Leppard. He’d woken in an ICU two weeks later. The trucker that hit him head on hadn’t seen his black Jeep in the dark. The only thing that kept Stiles from the guilt was that the trucker had walked away. 

 

There were close to twenty-five in all, still alive and in various stages of malnutrition. A little carelessness was worth their lives. Stiles would pay the consequence as Berkano burned through the djinn’s dream and freed their minds. 

 

It was a powerful thing, the djinn thrall, and Stiles felt the weight of freeing so many minds at once slam into him like that semi-truck. Derek’s eyes opened first, and Stiles huffed out a little, grievous sound. 

 

“Savin’ your ass again, Sourwolf,” Stiles managed to say before his knees hit the ground.


	4. Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles rides out the consequences of Berkano.

Stiles woke up feeling itchy. Not the vague, belly button or ball-sack itch. It burned his palms and the soles of his feet. He wanted-needed-to move, to run, shout, be. His skin vibrated as he sat up, a live wire in his veins that made him want to tear at his flesh until he found it, ripped it out. Except, that wasn’t an option, and there was another vague, cloying urge that was almost sweet, seductive. 

 

Fucking runic consequences.

 

The little bedroom someone had put him in was painted a pale green color that was pretty enough if Stiles didn’t think too hard on the color of kelpie blood. Someone had traded his worn jeans and Carhart for soft sweat pants and a well-worn tank top, but Stiles couldn’t find it in him to be embarrassed, not with this burning in his veins. He was up and out of the bed in a breath, pacing the length of floor and running hands through his short hair. 

 

His smokes were in the pocket of his jacket, and it was nowhere to be found in the little bedroom. He glared at the door, considered going out the window.. The word outside was the vague shadow of a full-moon night punctuated by flashes of lightning, though Stiles couldn’t hear the thunder. He tapped the glass with a finger, thick, soundproofing glass, but the window slid open easily enough. 

 

He frowned out at the little sloping roof below, and the itch drove him out on the shingles, barefoot. There were only so many people that could be in the house, and he wasn’t super excited about any of them. 

 

Later, he would remember that Pethro’s addiction, Laguz’s fear, and Berkano’s recklessness was in his veins. Right now, he wanted a smoke and to get the hell out of dodge, any way possible. 

 

-Consequences-

 

Stiles woke up in a little dive bar three days later. He’d fallen asleep under a pool table, and no one had bothered to wake him up. His joints ached with the pain of prolonged immobilization, and his head pounded a samba that made him want to heave. 

 

Mother-fucking runic consequences. 

 

It was dark in the bar, closed down for the spare hours between too-late and too-early. The only light was from a Miller Lite sign and a jukebox. He groaned as he sat up, striking his head on the bottom of the pool table and stumbling to his feet. 

 

“Fuck...me…” he groaned, trying to straighten up and ease the pain from his back. 

 

“I’d rather not,” a dull, angry voice said. Stiles nearly shit himself. Nearly. 

 

Algiz was around him, shielding him, before he even realized he’d called upon the rune. He probably didn’t need it, but an annoyed Derek Hale in a dive bar wasn’t something he was willing to chance. 

“The hell are you doing here?” Stiles asked, cracking his neck and working his way down on his physical check list. His shoulder ached, but it had ached since a minotaur-and guess the fuck what? Those? Stronger than they look-had pinned him to a tree with nothing but it’s forefinger. His chest was fine, and his left knee, where a mere-bitch had sunk her pointy little claws into his flesh, was better than most days. Convinced he wasn’t going to fall apart, he turned to take in the wolf. 

 

Derek looked good for a thirty-something year old man. He hadn’t lost his dark hair or the trimness that he’d worked hard at in his youth. Stiles supposed he looked good too, now that his fitness was something that could save his life. It had been a long time since a pair of biceps could make him flush though, so he just stared, unimpressed. 

 

He was sitting on the bar, feet up on a stood, and elbows on his drawn up knees. Derek looked as unimpressed with Stiles as Stiles felt with himself. 

 

“What?” he asked, holding his arms out to either side in a gesture he’d learned was both annoying and impressive. 

 

“You jumped off the second story awning of my house,” Derek said, as if that meant something. “Barefoot, in pajamas, in the rain in the middle of November.” 

 

Stiles didn’t see a problem with any of it, other than the fact that he still didn’t have shoes, and his arms were a bit chilly. He didn’t want to think about how he smelled, wearing the same clothes during a still un-known-duration of a runic bender. 

 

“If that’s not enough, you’ve been drinking for three days, you’ve been smoking like a chimney, and you slept with three people that first day when you didn’t smell like a back alley.” Stiles winced at the last. Normally, Berkano made him a different kind of reckless. 

 

“And you, as my...former alpha, get to chastise me after the fact?” Stiles asked. 

 

“I tried to stop you twice. This is the first time I’ve made it back here that you didn’t…” he looked confused, lost for words. “You made me distracted? I don’t know, I was here, I knew what I wanted, and then I was back home before I remembered why I’d come.” 

 

“Sowilo,” Stiles said, taking care to not put any power into the rune. 

 

“Don’t!” Derek snapped, leaping off the bar, sending the stool skittering to the side. “Don’t say that word again.” 

 

It took Stiles a moment to realize that he must have dropped Algiz because Derek’s hand was fisted in the tank top Stiles still wore. He considered a moment but still couldn’t tell when he’d let the shield go. 

 

“I just want to help. We all...you were gone. No one heard you go out in the storm, and when we went to check on you, you were just gone.” Derek let Stiles go, but he didn’t back away. “We wanted to make sure you were alright, after everything.” 

 

“After what, Derek?” Stiles asked, determined he wasn’t going to shout. “After you threw in the towel? After Lydia asked me to do the impossible and blamed me when I couldn’t? After Scott-”

 

“No. After you pulled everyone out of a hallucination and passed out.” Derek looked...concerned? “Why did you pass out?” 

 

Mother fucking ignorance. 

 

“Look,” Stiles said, pinching the skin between his eyebrows to stem off the throbbing headache. “I get that you weren’t there for the Magic Has Consequences lecture, but you should know by now that nothing’s free. I used too much magic, and when I woke up, the runes took what they were owed.” 

 

He had hoped the mention of magic and runes would confuse the wolf enough that he’d back off. Derek Hale of Stiles’s past would have nodded and dismissed the idea, even if he didn’t understand. 

 

“And what were they owed?” Derek asked, and Stiles grunted. 

 

“Addiction, fear and carelessness,” Stiles said with a smile. “You did say I was drinking and fucking my way through the last few days. Buy a vowel, Hale.” 

 

“This happens every time you...use your magic?” Derek asked, but he already knew from the frown on his face. 

 

Stiles scoffed and moved to push past the wolf. He was surprised when Derek let him go. He should have been more surprised when something smashed into the back of his head and sent him sprawling. His vision blacked out on him as he blinked up at Derek who stood over him with guilt written on his face.


	5. Jailhouse Confessional Part One: John

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles and John have a talk. Stiles finds out something about his father that's more than a little startling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a terrible person. I know, but because of my terribleness, you get like...three? Three chapters today. All posted...now! and...

When Stiles woke up to the kelpie blood green room for the second time, there was no runic magic singing in his skin, but there was a jailer, which was almost worse. 

 

“Don’t think about it, kid.” His father’s voice was a mix of disappointment and the careful Sheriff-Tone that Stiles had heard growing up when John had gotten a serious call after hours. 

 

Stiles chuckled. There was something about John’s raising hunters that was vaguely amusing. 

 

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” John said, and this voice was one that Stiles didn’t want to deal with. This was the Father voice. 

 

“You wouldn’t,” Stiles said, rolling to the side of the bed, feet cool on the wooden floor. He hadn’t noticed the bedside table before, the little photo frame there of John and Stiles. Without the runes in his system, he could see that this room belonged to his father. Spartan and clean, but homey. There was a gun on the little chair-side table beside John. 

 

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” John asked, and Stiles just grunted a negative. He ran ginger fingers over the back of his head, wincing when he found sutures there. “Derek had to hit you pretty hard to knock you out. Scott stitched you up.” 

 

“You let a veterinarian’s assistant close my head wound?” Stiles asked, unimpressed. John didn’t have the good grace to look remotely ashamed. 

 

“Melissa was at work, and Scott’s not anyone’s assistant anymore.” John was angry. That much was clear in the tone. “You’d know that if you called once a year or god-forbid stopped by.” 

 

“Been busy,” Stiles said. “Had to wash my hair.” 

 

He was aware he was being a little asshole. It was a defense mechanism, one that was nearly constant in his life. Hurt and angry himself, he couldn’t bring himself to give half a fuck about how anyone felt about him leaving.

 

“Shampoo in your brain, but you’ll answer the phone when Peter Hale calls?” John asked, not kindly. 

 

“A. I listened to Peter’s voicemail, and B. Peter never gave me shit about what I am.” 

 

“You’re a boy-”

 

“I’m a runic mage,” Stiles seethed. “And I’m a man, been one for a while now, in case you missed it. Turned twenty-eight a few months back.” 

 

John seemed to startle a little at that, as if he wasn’t aware of just how long it had been since he’d seen his son, how much the man in front of him had grown from the awkward, gangly kid that used to sneak out to see his best friend and explore the boring countryside. 

 

“I don’t want to fight,” John said, the bluster going out of him. For all Stiles tried, he couldn’t keep the same venom in his heart when John looked like that: tired and defeated. 

 

“Then let me leave,” Stiles said. There were ways he could go, so very easily that it was laughable, but...his father’s worried and half-afraid face when asking Stiles about dark magic put the thought out of his head. 

 

“You told Derek that the...the magic makes you do things you don’t want to do?” John sounded hopeful, painfully so, and Stiles snorted. 

 

“It’s my choice to use the magic. I’m aware of the consequences, and it doesn’t ever make me do anything completely out of my own character.” Stiles gave him a little smile. “Sorry that all your disappointments are me and not a magic-fix-all.” 

 

“God-damnit, that’s not what I meant!” John was on his feet, the chair fallen backward in his haste to stand. There was gold in his eyes, and Stiles froze.


	6. Jailhouse Confessional Part Two: Scott

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles may or may not react to this badly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now! and...

Chapter Five: Jailhouse Confessional  
Part Two: Scott

 

“They bit you,” Stiles whispered, the words foreign on his tongue. “Scott fucking bit you?” Stiles asked, anger and resentment welling in his chest. He was out the door and walking down a long, wide hallway, stopping at every door. 

 

“Scott!” Stiles shouted, trying to open another door. It refused to give, so Stiles put his shoulder into it, hitting it hard twice until the frame splintered away. A familiar brunette sat on the bed, headphones on and staring, wide-eyed up at the door, but Stiles was gone before he could say anything. “Scott! We’ve got to fucking talk!” 

 

“Stiles!” He could hear his father and Danny’s voices calling after him. 

 

“Scott Fucking McCall!” Stiles shouted once more before he reached the end of the hall and a staircase to the lower level. A crooked jaw met his fist at the bottom, and Stiles felt his fourth and fifth metacarpals snap under the force of the blow. He’d put enough Uruz into it that Scott went down hard, hand flying to his jaw. The rune gave him the strength to knock the werewolf down, but it flooded his system with an inappropriate heat, surging through his veins and making him uncomfortably tight in the trousers. 

 

“What the hell, Stiles?” Scott asked from the ground. 

 

“You bit my fucking father?” Stiles spat the question, pacing back and forth. The effects of the strengthening rune were never quick to wear off, and Stiles was afraid that if he touched something, it would shatter beneath the rune and his wrath. 

 

“I didn’t-”

 

“I did.” Stiles was anger and wrath and nothing else when he rounded on Derek. The wolf was standing a few paces off, hands out just too far to either side of his body, as if he was ready for an attack. Stiles would give him something he couldn’t catch with his- “He was shot, paralyzed. He asked for it.” 

 

“He...asked.” Stiles couldn’t make the words fit, couldn’t reconcile them with the fact that Derek Hale-a beta when Stiles left-had bitten his father, turned him, and John had asked for it. 

 

“I needed to keep working,” John said. He had followed Stiles to the bottom of the stairs, but he stayed there, like he was afraid of what Stiles would do if he came too close. “I didn’t think...I was going to tell you.” 

 

Stiles held up a hand, signaling for silence, and his father fell quiet. Stiles glared at the floor a moment before stalking to the door and slamming it behind him. In the yard, he paced, willing the anger and awkward heat from his system. 

 

He heard the door open and close again, but he didn’t bother to look up until the rune had released him and he could look at another person without wanting to rip their eyeballs out or jump their bones. Tired, physically and emotionally, he sank to the bottom stair he’d run down in fury thirty minutes before. 

 

Scott sat down beside him on the step a few minutes later. 

 

“Derek killed an alpha in Texas a year ago,” Scott said. “He wanted Cora, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.” Stiles nodded his head, accepting the fact that Derek was again an alpha. “I told your dad to wait, to think about it. I wouldn’t have...I’d have found a way to talk to you about it first.” 

 

“Of course you would have,” Stiles said. Scott was the White Knight, after all. He wouldn’t do anything wrong. “Derek didn’t tell him to wait.” 

 

“He said that the longer they waited, the less chance that the spine would heal itself,” Scott said with a shrug. 

 

They sat in silence for several long minutes. 

 

“I’m under house arrest?” Stiles asked when Scott didn’t leave. The silence was telling enough. “For how long?” That silence screamed.


	7. Jailhouse Confessional Part Three: Lydia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles probably can't stay mad at Lydia forever, but he can try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of note, this is NOT a fix it all series of chapters. Shit is still shit, and things are still not alright in the world.

Chapter Five: Jailhouse Confessional  
Part Three: Lydia

 

Stiles let himself be policed by Scott until the door opened again. Some new prison guard had come to replace him, but Stiles didn’t care enough to look. He was...angry, at himself more than Derek, he supposed. There wasn’t a damn thing he could have done after John had been shot, not with all his magic. The runes could promote good health. They could protect you, but Stiles hadn’t figured out a way to make them heal yet, to take back what had already been done. 

 

“You’re taller.” The observation was soft, half a whisper and half afraid. 

 

“Yeah,” Stiles agreed. He didn’t have the energy to be angry at any of them, not when he was so angry at himself. 

 

“You saved us.” 

 

“Yeah.” 

 

“My mother was still alive there.” It wasn’t an accusation, which was probably why it ached in his chest so fiercely that he had to squeeze his eyes shut. He’d been in the djinn dreams himself once, in the first few months of his crusade against the supernatural. That had been... well, Stiles hadn’t come out of that little daydream willingly. He’d have rather died there, with his mother and father alive and well and happy, Scott still his best friend, Lydia a close second and-

 

“I...ah...I know,” Stiles said against the lump in his throat. “A pair of hunters pulled me out of a djinn dream a few years back. I...I wanted to die there, in that lie.” He let himself look over at her then, still beautiful with her bright hair and lipstick. She still wore the weight of the djinn-dream. She was too thin, her skin sallow and pale, but she’d improve quickly. The side effects never lasted long if they didn’t kill you. 

 

“What did it show you?” she asked, arms wrapped around her middle, as if she was trying to hold her chest together. 

 

“Happiness,” he said with a shrug. “Just like everyone else.” 

 

“I’m happy here,” she insisted. “I have my Pack, and I have…”

 

“You’ve got a Doctorate in Physics, Lyds. You’re teaching high schoolers about gravity. Don’t tell me you’re as happy as you could be.” 

 

“I’m happy as I want to be,” she said, though there was a vague poutiness to her tone that Stiles remembered her using when she’d been backed into a corner and knew she was saying something childish. 

 

“Then I’m glad I could pull you all out.” 

 

“How did you? Peter said he tried, and none of us would wake up.” 

 

Stiles blew out a long puff of air. They’d had this conversation before, years ago, when Lydia didn’t want to listen. 

 

“A rune,” he said simply. It wouldn’t be enough for Lydia, but it was all she was ready to absorb. “My magic is in runes. I told you that.” 

 

“Maybe you should have explained what that means,” she said, a sharper tone to her voice now. Good. He supposed someone else should be as angry with him as he was with himself. “I didn’t know that there were...consequences to using magic. I wouldn’t have...I wouldn’t have asked you to do something that would have caused you harm if I’d have known.” 

 

“It wasn’t the consequence, Lyds,” Stiles admitted, still staring out at the preserve. “I couldn’t do it. If there was a rune that could heal, I’d have traded whatever consequence to save your mom.” They were quiet for several long minutes until she pressed her forehead between his shoulder blades and tucked her hands into the small of his back.

 

“I missed that,” she said softly. “You always took care of everyone. I missed you.” 

 

Stiles swallowed the words that came unbidden to his tongue, set his jaw, and stared into the forest.


	8. Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: If you haven’t figured it out yet, there are going to be a lot of chapters to this piece. After this one, the style of storytelling is going to change up a little bit. We’re going to leave Stiles and explore some of the Pack a little bit more, while Stiles is out doing what Stiles does, that precocious little devil.

Stiles dropped the runes into Derek’s lap. The wolf picked them up carefully, dangling them in front of his face a moment. 

 

It was odd, seeing Derek Hale of all people in a reclining chair, but there the wolf sat, in a hoodie and jeans, watching Sunday Night Football. The Pack was playing the Bears. Stiles rose an eyebrow. 

 

“Isaac likes ridiculing them,” Derek explained. Stiles carefully didn’t point out that Isaac-and since when had that particular wolf come back from Europe?-wasn’t anywhere to be seen.. 

 

“I’m not even going to blow holes in that defense,” Stiles said. “Give them those. It should help.” Stiles felt a knot of something grow in the pit of his stomach. He’d spent a long time perfecting his ability to lie without physiologic response, and when Derek didn’t even blink, it felt more like a failure than a victory. 

 

“I’m sure they’ll appreciate them.” 

 

“Where is everyone?” 

 

“Cora thought you could use some time to adjust to...the thought of everyone being here, of you being here.” 

 

“She say you were supposed to stay?” Stiles asked. Derek had the good grace to avert his eyes. 

 

“I wanted to make sure you were alright...after.” He held the powerless runes up for emphasis. Stiles bit viciously into his tongue. 

 

“Yeah,” Stiles said simply. “They’re...I don’t feel their effect as much.” As much as if I’d actually used them, he didn’t say. “I have a job on Florida in three days.”

 

“You’d better get going, then,” Derek said, simply. 

 

“I thought I was under house arrest. Some caveman werewolf knocked me over the head and brought me back to his-”

 

“Only until whatever the runes did to you wore off,” Derek said. He didn’t look even a little guilty. “You’re...fine?” 

 

“Abso-freaking-lutely,” Stiles said. He was. He was fan-fucking-tastic. 

 

“Then I’m not going to keep you here, not if you want to leave.” It occurred to Stiles, as he stood there, silent, that Derek Hale of all people, was answering questions. Not only was he answering questions, but he was contributing to conversation. Stiles shook his head against the foreign thought. 

 

“Then I’m going-”

 

“You don’t want to see your father?” Derek asked. When Stiles looked at him, his eyes were intense, as if looking for the answer to a question he hadn’t asked. 

 

“The father that hasn’t picked up a phone?” Stiles asked. The Sheriff had his number, had since college, and yet...The phone went both ways. “Not even when he was apparently paralyzed and turned into a werewolf?” 

 

“If it makes you feel better, he’s only been a wolf for three months,” Derek said, shrugging. He relaxed back into his chair. “I think you’re making a mistake, but Cora told me I don’t have the right to make decisions for other people.” 

 

“Cora grew up right,” Stiles said, unable to resist the barb. “Apparently time away from Beacon Hills is good for the soul.” 

 

Stiles didn’t wait for Derek to read him the riot act or try to convince him. He left the way he’d come, the charms heavy in his mind as they were light in Derek’s hand. 

 

“Don’t let him go, Derek,” Cora said, eyeing him critically. “There’s...he needs the pack, no matter how much he might think he doesn’t. He does things he doesn’t need to because he thinks he owes people.” 

 

“I won’t,” Derek promised. 

 

“Sometimes people need freedom more than they need the Pack,” he said softly, considering the small runic tokens. Derek was pleased that Stiles couldn’t hear lies.


	9. Third Eye Open; Visually Blind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Alright. This is where we get to have a little bit of fun, a little bit of stupidity, and above all else, no Pack for a chapter or two anyway. But...John, because I can’t stay mad at Papa Stilinski. Also, for clarity: Dagaz is a rune of dawning, realization, etc. It also can focus someone’s purpose and direct their will, which is why we get this fun silly little chapter.

Stiles always had a hard time with Tyr’s Aett, which really, should have told him something before he jumped head first into the shit show that this had become. All he’d wanted was to bring some semblance of direction to his life, encourage things to start going his way instead of the exact opposite of what he wanted. 

 

Falling back into the Pack, their bullshit and their drama, had left him reeling. He’d taken out a kelpie causing problems in Fort Lauderdale with little more than a mutual bitch-fest about what they wanted out of life and what they were getting. The kelpie had been forced deeper and deeper into the Everglades, and then the airboats had started. 

 

Stiles really shouldn’t have let her get started on the airboats, but he had. He listened as she bitched, and when all was said and done, he helped her find a nice little backwater in Louisiana instead. That was what did it, really. He was a supernatural moving crew. That’s what his life had become. He had no family. He had no publically acknowledgable purpose. He’d run out of town yet again, leaving his father without...Jesus. His father that was a werewolf.

 

So...he did a thing. He did a thing, and now...well.

 

If he could see to find the god damned thing, he’d claw through it until it left his skin. He should have known not to draw on himself. He should have known it was a really fucking bad idea. 

 

He ran a hand over his forearm, trying to sense the little differences in the skin, trying to feel the ink from where he’d drawn Dagaz. He’d already stumbled his way to the shower, tripped, knocked his head off the wall, and spent five minutes swearing under his breath. As much scrubbing as he’d done after, he was surprised he had any skin left. 

 

He had just found the rubbing alcohol-or what he hoped was rubbing alcohol- and was about to douse his arm when his cell rang, and when the fuck had that been so loud? 

 

“Yeah,” he said after fumbling finding it and accepting the call. 

 

“I’m surprised you answered the phone.” He shouldn’t have. John sounded half-drunk in that way that wolves only get when they’ve been working at it. 

 

“You caught me on an off day,” Stiles said, dousing his arm in the alcohol. It stung in his nose. 

 

“You ran off again.” John didn’t sound surprised anymore. He did sound disappointed. 

 

“Had a job in Florida,” Stiles said. “You’ve got to get paid if you want to keep living under a roof.” 

 

“You sound...you sound alright?” 

 

“Yeah, dad,” Stiles said. He felt his eyes sting with the promise of softness, of tears. He blinked them away and grabbed the bottom of his shirt to wipe at the alcohol. 

 

“Then whatever...look, I don’t know what you’re doing for a living. I don’t know when you’re in trouble, and...these things you do make you not yourself. They hurt you, and I’m your father. I’m worried, kid.” 

 

Stiles groaned into the receiver. He scrubbed at his forearm blindly. 

 

“Dad. Look. I know what the runes do. I know the consequences.” He was going to hell for lying. “If it makes you feel any better, if I’m ever going to use one that makes me do stupid shit, I’ll call you first.” He was going to the special hell for lying. 

 

“And you’ll wait for me to get there,” John said firmly. 

 

And because he was already picking out a penthouse in the seventh circle…

 

“Yeah, dad. If I have time.” 

 

“Either way,” John argued, and Stiles felt himself smile. That was his father, wolf or not.

 

“I’ll call you if you call me before you ask a piss-poor alpha to bite you,” Stiles groused. It was a low blow, he knew, but Derek had been a poor alpha. He’d bitten those that needed it, sure, but he’d ran them like a little werewolf army. “He’s not like...having you do drills in the woods, right?” 

 

“Derek’s not so bad,” John said, and Stiles could have sworn there was a snarl there, like he father was defending the alpha because he wanted to.

 

“You call me before you do anything stupid, or Derek does anything stupid that gets your throat ripped out, and I’ll call you,” Stiles offered. It was the only olive branch he was willing to offer, the only one he was willing to accept. 

 

“Alright, kid,” John said. “You call me for more than just that, alright?” 

 

Stiles stared blindly down at his forearm for a long while. If John couldn’t hear him breathing, Stiles was sure he’d have thought they’d dropped the call. 

 

“Sure, dad,” Stiles muttered, not really sure why he was even saying it. “I’ve got to get going.” He didn’t wait for the goodbyes. He just tagged the little red end call button and tossed the phone down onto the dark blue bedspread. It took him half a second to realize that he could see. 

 

He glared down at Dagaz and scrubbed the ink away until his skin was bright red. Stupid fucking runes doing whatever the fuck they wanted with his intention.


	10. We All Fall Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone asked for more backstory, so I thought I’d do a bit of that here. Also...we may have just turned down a path I wasn’t going to take this, but the idea came up and now...well. This might become a Dark Stiles! Fic for a few chapters. Maybe. Possibly. Thoughts?

Stiles hated demons, as a general rule. He’d run into one or two that weren’t completely bag-o-dicks level assholes, but they were rare enough. What he really hated about demons, about the old ones, the ones smart enough to make it out of hell and keep on keeping on., those? What he really hated about those was that they tended to have a MO. 

It made tracking them easy, but it made some of them real bastards because some of them? Some of them really hated children. 

Stiles stared down at the three day old corpse of a five year old girl. She had strawberry blonde hair pulled into pig tails. Her head and shoulders were the only things visible beneath the mound of flowers growing up around her body. The perfumed smell of posies mixed with the sickly sweet smell of decay. 

Stiles swallowed, trying to quell his stomach. The watery nausea creeping up inside of him only grew, and he fought the urge to vomit. 

This wasn’t the first. She wasn’t the second or the third. The demon had been killing children across the Southwest since the 1700’s, always before puberty, and always overgrown with the sickly sweet posies. It just so happened that it had meandered through town the same time as Stiles. 

The pale strawberry blonde of her hair made his stomach clench violently, and all he could imagine was Lydia at five. The pallor to her skin, the way her dark eyelashes stood out against cold cheeks…

“Come on Lyds,” Stiles said through the closed bedroom door. He knocked gently. “You can’t hide in here forever. Whatever it is this time, we’ll find a way through it. We always do.” 

Lydia had dropped out of her senior classes, and Jackson--of all people--had called Stiles and asked him to check in on her. There was nothing force of nature Lydia Martin couldn’t face, quirk an exceptionally well groomed eyebrow at, and march right over. 

“Lydia, I’m not going to throw my shoulder out trying to break your door down, but I will can and will burn it down.” 

Something collided with the door on the other side, and if Stiles had to guess from the sound it made, he’d place it as a shoe - not a boot but something with a heel. It was snatched open a moment later, and Stiles was jerked in by his collar. 

“You have magic!” Lydia said, eyes wide and glassy. They were red, as if she’d spent a long time crying, and the skin of her nose was rubbed raw. 

“We’ve discussed this at length. Did something take your memories?” Stiles held a hand to her forehead, feeling for a fever. “Are you sick? That’s no reason to drop out-”

“My mother’s dying,” Lydia said sharply, as though if she said the words quickly they wouldn’t mean anything. The reality of hearing the words out loud must have hit her hard, because in a moment, she had sat down on her bed again. 

“Lydia?” Stiles asked, following her. His hand found her shoulder gently. “Lydia,, what can I do?” 

“Fix it?” she asked, voice broken. Her eyes squeezed shut and more tears found their way down her cheeks. “Please, can you fix it?” 

Runes for health came unbidden to his mind, but they were all preventative or worse, they were dangerous. Odin’s rune, Ansuz, had consequences he wasn’t ready to discover. The only time he’d ever tried to use it, he’d ended up muttering about things that didn’t exist--really didn’t exist. In the end, it hadn’t even worked. 

“What...what is it?” he asked. Lydia never answered she just laid back on the bed, eyes closed, tears running from the corners of her eyes,. 

Stiles could imagine Lydia there, under the posies. The sweet smell he could almost imagine as her perfume. The vague, cloying feeling of panic, once so familiar, started low at the base of his spine. His hands shook as he walked away from the corpse, trying to distance himself from the thought. 

Days later, he watched a demon burn inside of a little boy. He had blackened fingers, and the tip of his nose was rotting away from the bone. His skin wept with sweat. In the end, the boy had looked up at Stiles with relief, and the spirit of a boy from the 1340’s, twisted with fear and pain, was free. 

He had never used Thurisaz before. The cleansing fire ripped through the demon as easily as anything. The consequence was slower to come, and it was something Stiles-the Stiles that had burned the child’s corpse-would have never paid.


	11. Intervention Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: The style of this is going to change drastically to convey the change in characterization here. I sort of ran with this idea, and it’s super angsty but fun to write. I’m officially calling Chapter 1-10 as the Runic Consequences Arc and Chapters 10-13-14 as the Dark Stiles Arc.

It started out slowly. There was a vague annoyance at the back of his mind when a tractor slowed down his drive across Missouri. It wasn’t unusual. He’d ridden for miles behind slow moving farming implements before, just to avoid highways and interstates, but this time…

He muttered under his breath as he roared past the tractor, back end nearly clipping the front loader on his way back into the lane. Down the road at a gas station truck stop, he overheard a local farmer talking about how he’d almost been forced off the road by a little black Chevelle. 

Stiles swallowed the mouthful of french fry, flagged down the waitress, and left a generous tip. He’d done that, and not because he was...reckless or in a hurry or not paying attention. He’d done that on purpose. A vague, cloying thought crossed his mind, but he dismissed it. 

Later, he broke the side mirror off of the souped up hot-rod that stole his parking spot at the Red Roof Inn. When the guilt hit him, it was more of a light tap on the back of the head than anything else, and he was only passingly aware of it before breaking into one of the rooms to spend the night. 

)O(

There were moments of clarity that cropped up over the next few days, more and more panicked and more and more damning.

-A fire burned in a jewelry store. Flashes of diamond and emerald and sapphire as they were dumped in a backpack. 

“Jesus, man, do you remember the rush we used to get sneaking out? I think I found a better one. You’ve got to-Oh. Oh, god. I did that. I really did that. Scotty? I think you need to come get me, man. Call me when you get this.”

-Muzzle flash in a back alley. Give me your money. Unmistakable thundering of a shotgun blast and the almost faint sound of a body hitting pavement.

“Dad? Dad, something’s wrong. I think I killed somebody.” 

-The cries of a child in panic as it searched for its mother after the man with the cotton candy had lead him from the carnival and left him in the park, untouched but lost. 

“Lydia, please. One of you guys needs to call me back. I don't know what’s going-nevermind.” 

 

)O(

Stiles hadn’t been Stiles in two weeks when he finally got caught up outside of a little spit of nothing in southern Illinois. He spent the night cooling his heels in a jail cell, and in the morning, walked right on out with a whisper of Uruz. 

It was another month before someone caught up. 

He woke up in another cell, this one dark and dank, but the cot under him made up with sheets and a pillow softer than sin. He sat up, straining against the zip ties that kept his wrists bound to the bedframe, and tried to mutter a freeing rune. 

“Duck tape’s a real bitch.” Peter Hale looked better than Stiles had last seen him. He’d lost that gaunt, haunted look, and in an instant, Stiles wanted to put it back there. Laguz could do that for him, if he could open his mouth and find a way to draw the rune. He thrashed against the bed, muttering muted slurs past the duck tape. 

“Now see, Stiles, this is why you’re here with us, and not with your father and the Pack.” Chris Argent was a wraith when he wanted to be, and Stiles hadn’t even seen him leaning in the corner. “Your dad might not be able to watch his son tied down. Lydia might feel bad when you batted your eyes.” 

“We’re not going to do that,” Peter said, as if it needed clarification. Stiles was going to make them burn. Chris first, so Peter could watch and remember. “I think he’s trying to say something.” 

“Probably something to rip your spleen out,” Chris said. “Good thing you thought of that duck tape.” 

“I’m very resourceful.” 

Stiles worked the duck tape, but it held. He was just trying to push his tongue up between his lip and the adhesive when Chris added another layer overtop. Stiles tasted blood on his tongue when the hunter pulled away. 

“Now, we’ve heard some things, Stiles; they aren’t good things.” Chris had never been so set on intimidation, and the sight made Stiles want to scream with laughter. “We’re going to need you to tell us what’s going on, or we can’t help you.” He held up a little white board and a dry erase marker. 

One of his hands freed from the restraints, Stiles flipped Chris off and threw the board at his head. Peter caught it, but the gesture made him feel better. The second time it was put in his lap, he uncapped the marker, stared at Peter, and drew. 

Five runes scrawled out across the top, and he held it up. Chris copied them down diligently, as if he thought Stiles was really going to help them. Stiles fought to keep the smile from his eyes as he wrote below: 

I’m going to make you burn.


	12. One of These Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I am writing this before getting literally any feedback on the whole direction this is going, so sorry ya’ll if you didn’t like the last chapter. I’m enjoying writing it. Your friendly, lovable idiot/genius will be back to his old self in a chapter or two.

Stiles wondered if this is what it was like when he was the nogitsune. There was an edge to him, a finely honed razor blade in his chest that made him want to reach out and tear into the hearts of those around him. His weapon was words all of his life, but that had been taken away.

Now, he stared. 

Peter had left, something equal parts haunted and enraged dancing on his face. Chris only sat there, meeting Stiles’ stare like he was trying to puzzle something out. He only looked away when his phone vibrated. 

“See, Stiles,” Chris said after reading a text. “I don’t think this is you. I don’t think a kid that gave so much to protect people, to keep a group of young, stupid werewolves good, is going to go off the high dive in the shallow end.”

There was no way to respond, not way to tell him that he was wrong, so Stiles laid back down on the cot, kicked his legs up lackadaisical, and hummed.

“And you did go off the high dive, Stiles. Your head is going to crack against the bottom. You’re going to break your neck if you’re not careful. But, you know what I think? I think you’re smarter than you give yourself credit for. I don’t think you can tell me what’s going on, but you tried. Just now, I think you tried.” 

Stiles huffed against the duck tape and picked up the dry erase marker again. 

‘Take this tape off, and I’ll tell you exactly what’s going on,’ he scrawled.

“I’m not that stupid, and neither are you.” Chris was in his face in a moment, hand against his chest, keeping him down on the bed. “You gave me five runes, five runes Stiles, and you know what you did? You told me a story.” 

Fuck all if he had. He’d wanted to make Peter squirm, and squirm he did. 

“You know these things better than anyone.” Chris held up his own drawing, putting it in Stiles face, and it was only then that he realized what he’d done. Nauthiz, Uruz, Kenaz, Thurisaz, Sowilo.

‘One of these things is not like the other,’ something sing-songed in his head. 

Uruz... Uruz wasn’t a rune of fire. Why had he...and Thurisaz. Thurisaz only resulted in cleansing fire when it wasn’t reversed, and yet he’d scrawled the rune there, backward. Backward it meant.... 

‘One of these things just doesn’t belong.’

“Lydia is fantastic at research when properly motivated, and you left her a voicemail a week ago that was more than motivating. Do you remember that, Stiles? She researched for a long time. It took her all of a handful of hours to figure out what the runes meant, what they do if they’re reversed.” 

Chris let him up, stealing the dry erase marker and the white board as he went, wiping it carefully clean. Deft fingers ripped the duck tale from Stiles’s mouth. 

“Mother fucker,” he muttered, rubbing at the angry skin. “I’m going to kill you, you son of a bitch. I’m going to put a sword in your belly, just like your daughter.” The words were venom and malice, flying off his tongue as fast as he could make them. Chris stood there, listening to him as he swore himself out. 

“You don’t have anything to write with, and runes need a physical form. I don’t see you stabbing me today, kid; even if you could, is there a rune for that? Your little bag of tricks is fairly powerful, but not one of them can make something from nothing.” 

“I’m not going to need a rune to-”

“You’re not even going to want to once you cool your heels. You’ve been with us for almost a day now, Stiles. How long do you think a consequence can last? Two days? Three?” Chris slapped fresh duck tape down over Stiles’s mouth and replaced the zip tie. 

Bound and silenced, Stiles could do nothing but stare viciously at the man as he walked toward the door. 

“You did good, kid,” Chris said. “We heard you this time.” The door shut behind him. 

‘If you guessed this one is not like the others, then you’re absolutely right,” the voice finished. That little razor edge in his chest throbbed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN #2: Alright, for those of you that don’t have a runic cheat sheet. Stiles wrote:
> 
> Nauthiz - a need for fire  
> Uruz - can mean unexpected change  
> Kenaz - transformative fire  
> Thurisaz - cleansing fire - reversed meaning malice, evil, hatred, torment, spite, and lies  
> Sowilo - cleansing fire
> 
> Which really tells us a bit of a story, no?


	13. Intervention Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I am having a ball writing this. I don’t know why, but I am. You got two chapters yesterday (12/21/16) and I’m going to try to get two more to you by the end of the day today (12/22/16) as a sort of gift for being a complete POS and not sticking to my posting schedule this last week due to “life”.

When Stiles woke up the next morning, Lydia sat cross legged at the end of his little cot, staring at him as though she was trying to see something that wasn’t there. The look made him uncomfortable, and he brought a foot up and tipped her backward.

“Stiles!” she shouted, arms pinwheeling. He was quietly pleased with the look of panic on her face, but it was gone a moment later. She never fell. 

“That was awfully spiteful, Stiles.” Peter Hale of all people sat behind the blond, a hand on her back as he kept her from falling. “I suppose that’s an improvement from maliciously vindictive.” 

Stiles tried to mutter through the duck tape, but it did no good. 

“Is this necessary?” Lydia asked, glaring down at the make-shift gag and the zip ties. 

“Yes,” Peter said. “I’d prefer not to burn another Hale house down.” 

“He wouldn’t-” Lydia bit her lip, and the color drained from her face. “He wouldn’t normally.” 

Stiles gave her another shove with his foot to get her off the bed, annoyance curling in his stomach at listening to them talking about him. This time, she toppled backward, landing across Peter’s lap, and rolled to her feet. Fire and wrath were in her eyes as she turned toward him. 

“You are going to regret being an absolute asshole, Stiles Stilinski,” she said, hands on her hips. Stiles rose an eyebrow in hope that she would understand the complete lack of fucks he had to give. 

“I told you this was a bad idea.” Derek Hale sat at the bottom of the steps, head in his hands, not looking at anyone in the room. “No one needs memories of their friends forced to do things against their character.”

The whiteboard was at the end of the bed, and Stiles kicked it hard, sending it skittering along the cement floor of the basement. It stopped a few feet away from Derek’s feet, but the message was clear. 

“We’re looking for another runic mage that can undo this if it doesn’t wear off,” Lydia said evenly. “And until then, Stiles, I’d recommend being nice to the people that kept you out of prison.” 

“Don’t-”

“Why not, nephew?” Peter asked, cutting Derek off. “Are you afraid it’s going to upset him?”

Stiles reveled in the pain in his voice, in the edge there that meant Peter was still thinking of fire and all the pain that it could bring, that Stiles could bring, with nothing more than a word and a drawing. They’d been careful so far, so very careful to keep his hands tied up or his mouth covered. They’d make a mistake eventually; they always did.


	14. The Best Laid Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Holy shit guys and gals. I apologize profusely, but I have excuses. So in real life, I am an aspiring author, and the other day I received a request for a partial manuscript off of a query letter to an agent. So I freaked out, proofread the hell out of the first ten pages of my piece, and sent it off. I was too nervous to consider writing, and then, when I finally had the calm back, I get a request for a full manuscript, which made me lose my natural mind. So, what I’m trying to say is: sorry, not sorry, but this is the best reason I’ve ever had for not updating. Here’s chapter 14.

_“The runes have made me do things I haven’t wanted to do before,” Stiles said, voice hoarse from disuse, soft and crackling. “They’ve never...they’ve never made me into something I wasn’t, not ever. So what if....what if what Thurisaz made me was just me? Just me that didn’t give a fuck anymore?”_

Stiles picked at the sharp edge of the bedframe carefully, slowly, making sure his body hid what he was doing on the far side. A sharp pain slid across his fingertip, and he smiled against the duck tape while Peter and Chris stared across at him. They’d been just watching him for the better part of four hours, and all that while, they hadn’t noticed. 

_“One made me a coward once, and you know I’ve never been the most brave but that? I was afraid of everything. I sat in the bathtub in a hotel room on the side of I-80 and didn’t do so much as breathe deep for two days.”_

Blood welled and slipped down Stiles’s fingers, tickling the webbed space between. Carefully, oh so carefully, he slid his bloodied finger along the cement wall. A vertical line, uncrossed but touched by two others running parallel at an angle from the top. Ansuz. Odin’s rune held power in words and speech, and it would make what he was about to do all the more potent.

Smiling, he ran his fingertip along the sharp edge again. 

_“Perthro turns me into a cigarette feening crack-baby. You know I always used to abuse the adderall. Jesus, this is me. This is all me, and I’ve just been ignoring it for years.”_

A crooked cross joined Odin’s rune, and Stiles couldn’t help but feel the rush of a plan coming together. Across the room, Peter shifted uneasily, carefully studying Stiles and then Chris, head held up as if he were trying to smell something vague and distant. Let him smell the blood, Stiles thought. I was only so far away now. Sowillo joined Nauthiz and Ansuz, and he was ready. 

“I know what I’m doing, you know? I’m in there, and I can see what I’m doing, and somewhere, I know it’s a bad idea, but...I can’t bring myself to not. I just...I just do it anyway. That’s me, you know? I’ve always just done what I thought was best, no matter what evidence I had against it. This is all me.” 

“What are you doing?” Peter asked, standing and crossing to the bed. Stiles shrugged at him, and gestured toward his mouth with his free hand. Peter, as Peter had always been, was suspicious, but an extra long sniff had him ripping the duck tape from Stiles’s mouth .

“Sucker,” Stiles muttered, low and quick followed by the runes. “Ansuz, Nauthiz…”

Peter’s hand clamped down hard over his mouth. The rush of the runes jumping to his bidding was instantaneous, but he couldn’t speak the last of them, couldn’t make it complete with Peter’s hand hard on his mouth, forcing his lips back into his teeth viciously. 

“That was nasty,” Peter said simply, and struck him, hard in the temple. 

When Stiles woke up, the emotional hunger from Nauthiz combined with the gut-punch of Ansuz’s clarity was painful. He was still chained to the bed, this time both hands up, to a bar that ran the length of the wall, and his mouth was again duck taped. It didn’t matter, because he wouldn’t have moved even if he could have. 

Sitting, alone, in the dank of the basement, clarity and consciousness a bright white thing in his mind, he remembered. 

He remembered a man in an alley, a knife pointed at him, the glint of moonlight off of metal, and a gunshot. 

He remembered a businessman showing him a set of diamonds he couldn’t afford and the sharp, acrid smell of smoke. 

He remembered a little boy with an ice cream that had thought Stiles’ hoodie was cool, crying alone in a park. 

Nausea churned low in his stomach, and as he squeezed his eyes shut against the reality of what he had done, hot tears ran from the corners of his eyes, soaking into the pillow beneath his head.


	15. Guilty Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a turning point, mostly filler.

Stiles woke up with his hands still bound over his head. The bed had been pulled away from the wall, scrubbed with bleach, if his nose wasn’t failing him. There was still the vague emptiness in the pit of him, proof that the consequence was well on its way to wearing off. 

The guilt would take longer and far more potent substances to erase. 

“You yourself yet?” 

Stiles looked up the length of his body to find Chris sitting at the foot of the bed, eyes sharp and watching for any sign of deception. Stiles considered a moment, searching the core of him for any of the anger and malice that had soaked his bones. Finding none, he nodded. 

Chris visibly slumped in his chair, bringing a shaky hand up and scrubbing it down his face. “Alright kid. I’m going to take the tape off.” 

Stiles held as still as he could when Chris gripped the edges of the duct tape and peeled it off. He winced as the adhesive caught the wisps of hair on his cheeks and upper lip that still refused to become real facial hair even in his twenties. 

“You alright, kid?” Chris asked, eyeing Stiles like he thought he might be about to do something, and that? Wasn’t that damning. 

“I’m sorry,” Stiles said, sotto voce. There weren’t words for what he’d said to Chris, for bringing up Allison, for dragging her memory through his mind and making him relive the terror of her death. The words weren’t enough; they never would be, not for a man dead in an alley, not for a shopkeeper without a shop, and not for a little boy, scared and asking for his mother.

Not for Chris. Not for Peter. 

Jesus, Peter. Stiles couldn’t find the werewolf in the basement, but he was sure not to be far, not with the way they’d been watching them in turns. 

“Who are you looking for?” Chris asked. There wasn’t a response for apologies devoid of forgiveness.

“Peter,” Stiles said, shaking his head a little. “I’m not dangerous anymore.” He gave his wrists a little tug. Chris considered a moment before shaking his head. 

“Nah, kid. You aren’t, but you’re also not getting off the leash just yet. I need to talk with your dad, the Pack. We need to figure out what we’re going to do…”

The “with you” was never said, but Stiles heard it. It was all he could think about as Chris walked up the stairs, pausing a moment at the bottom to give Stiles a measuring look, like he wasn’t sure if he should leave him there. Something crashed up stairs, and Chris jogged up. 

There was shouting, but not loud enough to be heard in the basement. He could make out the voices - Erica, Lydia, and oddly enough Derek For a moment, Stiles wanted to hear them, wanted to know what they were fighting about, but a split second later, he didn’t. He wanted to be as far away from those voices as possible. 

Lydia. She’d been looking for a rune master, someone to try and strip away the consequences from the core of him, and he’d...he’d been like he’d been to everyone else. Everyone. 

He’d never used Thurisaz before, didn’t know how it was going to affect him, and honestly? If he was standing in front of that child again, watching a demon turn a healthy child into a burned out husk of disease? He’d do it again. God, he’d do it again, and next time it might be a soccer mom dead in a parking lot or a school burning or the child might never find its way home. 

He’d do it again. 

Unless he couldn’t do it again.


	16. All the King's Horses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: So...yeah, this happened. I wrote a chapter from the Pack perspective here, and...I don’t hate it? I don’t think I hate it. But, it’s not my Stiles, so we’ll be back to him shortly. Maybe even today, as I didn’t have time to post this yesterday. This is also the longest chapter to date - Phew!

Boyd didn’t know what to do. Hell, anymore he never knew what to do or what not to do. He’d been indecisive as a child, cautious as a teen, and as an adult? Well, he spent a lot of time as an adult in Purgatory, running from things that went bump in the night, trying his best to bump back while keeping Erica safe. 

Keeping Erica safe should have been the least of his concerns there. Safe from herself would have been a better option. More often than not, it was her throwing herself in the path of another creature, starting the fight, instigating blood and tooth and fang. It made her feel safe at first, like she was the biggest bully on the playground. After a while, after learning that there were things in Purgatory older than even the idea of werewolves...well, it made her feel alive. 

Since they’d come back, since Stiles had pulled them out of that place between worlds, she’d had nowhere to take that energy, nowhere to turn to rip and tear when guilt became too much. She’d turned it inward, and in the years they’d been alive again, truly and completely alive, she’d started dieing. There was nothing Boyd could do about it because honestly? He felt the same way. Guilt was a powerful thing, but trauma, fear, and instinct were far greater. 

Except Stiles had put a charm around his neck. He’d made it, blessed it with his power, and left it for him, and that? It was a talisman that Boyd wasn’t willing to let go to waste. So, he’d worked at it. He’d examined all the little sharp edges in his mind, smoothed them, bathed the hurts, and he’d come out the other side, if not whole, pieced together. 

Erica hadn’t. She’d refused to wear the charm openly for a long time. For a while, she kept it in her pocket, and then, when it became clear that it wasn’t working, that some part of her was still broken, she’d looped it around her neck. She’d begged the charm to do its job, to seal up was was wrong with her, to make her whole again. 

It didn’t. 

Boyd found her face down in a pool of her own blood. There were no wounds, but the knife at her side as her own, and the blood pooling around her was from more than one attempt, more than one failed try. Now...he was afraid to blink. 

Which was why he needed answers. Answers that no one could give him, not really, but maybe someone could explain. Someone in no fair condition to do anything. Someone Boyd had abandoned, let go, because his own trauma, his own pain, was more important at the moment. Someone that was staring at him with haunted, shadowed eyes that reminded him so very much of Erica in the last few weeks. 

“What are you doing here?” Stiles asked. He hadn’t really changed since Boyd had seen him. That day at the crossroads, his hair had been grown out, his shoulders broad and his arms thick. He’d looked confident and competent. He’d looked like a hunter. 

Now, he looked like a man that had once held the world on his shoulders only to have someone come up behind him and steal it. 

“I wanted to talk to you about Erica,” Boyd said easily, sitting down on a chair. “Chris...Chris said that you’re yourself again.” 

“In a manner of speaking.” It was only Boyd’s werewolf hearing that let him make out the muttered words. “She’s not taking things well.” 

“No,” Boyd agreed. “She tried to kill herself yesterday. She woke up this morning.” Boyd pulled his talisman from around his neck, fingering the wrapped wire carefully before he stood up and lay it at Stiles’s bedside. “Whatever you did to mine that you didn’t do to hers...please?” 

The haunted, wrecked expression couldn’t increase, not from what he’d seen as he’d walked down the stairs, but the guilt there was damning. 

“I didn’t do anything to either of them,” Stiles said finally, as if the words were painful. “They...Wunjo and Nauthiz...the consequences aren’t...pleasant.” 

“Worse than this?” Boyd asked, gesturing to the shackles. “Worse than killing a man for trying to rob you?” He didn’t mean to make Stiles flinch back into the mattress, didn’t mean to make his eyes turn red. He picked up the little charms, the pair of them glinting in the low light. “They worked for me. Why did they work for me?” 

“Cora tell you what they were supposed to do?” Stiles asked. Boyd just nodded. “Then you wanted them to work. You did what they were supposed to force you to do. Erica...didn’t.” 

Boyd considered them a long moment, nodded, and sat them on the bed again. 

“Can you make them work?” he asked, the little part of him still capable of guild flaring unrepentantly. 

“The consequence-”

“Erica almost died. She tried to kill herself,” Boyd said, cutting him off. He was angry now, burning up from the inside. “I get that shit happens to you when you use your magic, but does it kill you? This is going to kill her, Stiles. Someday I’m going to wake up and she’s going to be hanging from the ceiling fan. And that’s what? Not worth whatever consequence that comes in preventing it? What? What could be so terrible, Stiles?” 

Boyd picked up the charms, held them at arm’s length, and hurled them into the wall. 

The cinder block chipped, little pieces falling to the ground just as Boyd’s knees gave out. He hit the ground hard, slumped forward over the bed, head bowed and pressed against Stiles’s hip. 

“Jesus Christ,” he said on a little, broken breath. “I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do?” 

It wasn’t fair. Boyd knew it wasn’t fair, but there was nowhere else to go. There wasn’t anything. His hands shook as he brought them up, reaching across Stiles and brushing the little ships of concrete off of Stiles’s abdomen. 

“Take these off,” Stiles said, but Boyd felt it through his forehead more than he heard it. Boyd’s head snapped up at the words, at their meaning settling into his mind. 

“Will it work?” he asked, careful of the hope bubbling in his chest. 

“If I put enough intention into it,” Stiles said with a nod. He wasn’t looking at Boyd, wasn’t so much as blinking. He stared resolutely at the ceiling, as though there was some meaning there no one else could see. 

“What will it do?” Boyd asked. 

“Wunjo will make her happy; she won’t care about what happened, whatever it was that made her...like she is. Nauthiz helps heal that pain while she doesn’t care about it, so that by the time they lose their power...she should be better.” 

“And what else does it do?” Boyd asked. When Stiles didn’t answer him, when he set his jaw and stared sightlessly up at the ceiling, Boyd couldn’t swallow around the lump in his throat as he reached up and snapped the restraints around Stiles’s wrists.


	17. Quick Fix - Mamma Always Said There Was No Such Thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look! Two in a day! That's like...you know...it almost makes up for the fact that I didn't update for a week. Almost. Maybe.

He didn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t what happened. 

Stiles sat on the cot, one rune in hand, gently running his fingers over it, time and time again, as if he were trying to put the form of it to memory anew. 

“What are you-”

“Intent is important,” Stiles said simply. “It shapes the strength of the rune, and it directs it toward the end I want. If...If I just use the runes without the intent, sometimes they do things they’re not supposed to do.” 

Boyd watched deft fingers trace the angular “P” and the odd crooked cross. Finally, effortlessly, Stiles brought the first one up, whispered its name under his breath, and then repeated it with the second. 

There was no light. No energy. There was no change that Boyd could see, nothing that made him think the magic had worked. Except, Stiles held out the necklace, dangling it from his fingertips, a look of such peace on his face that Boyd almost didn’t take it. Erica shouted something upstairs, her voice so cracked and high pitched Boyd’s ears couldn't make out the sounds. He took the necklace without question. 

He didn’t see so much as sense the peace leave Stiles’s face, the ease to his shoulders disappear. He didn’t look up at the runic mage, couldn’t if he wanted to leave, if he wanted to help Erica. Instead, he looped the necklace around his neck, startled by the pleasant low warmth in it, the way that it seemed to just make everything in his life not so sharp edged, not so terrible. The slow, easy happiness that bloomed in his chest could be addictive, he realized in that moment. He could easily keep the necklace, easily lose himself in it, never take it off. 

Erica sobbed something upstairs, and he swallowed hard before taking it back off. The emptiness in his chest was startling for a moment, crippling for a moment after, but he was fine as he climbed the stairs.

Stiles sat on the cot in the basement, remained carefully still as the door closed. Boyd didn’t know what to make of the silence, the completely and total lack of energy that Stiles had become since he’d seen him last. There were things to fix, he told himself. Things had an order, and he had to address them, but there were things there to fix in that basement. 

Erica was just as silent as he walked into the little bedroom they’d kept her in that morning. She had her knees drawn up to her chest, quiet tears running down her cheeks. Her wide, open eyes were devoid of any make up. Her war paint was gone, stripped away, and it was just her, there on the mattress, in a pair of sweatpants and a tank top. 

“Erica?” Boyd asked, voice as soft as he could make it. “Do you think you could put this on for me?” 

Her eyes sharpened, zeroed in on his outstretched hand as though she was going to rip it off. A feral little snarl slipped past her lips.

“Why? So it can do nothing again?” she asked, voice the hard edge of a knife. Vaguely, Boyd heard the door shut behind him. 

“It’ll help this time,” Body said, taking a step forward. Erica shifted on the bed, her eyes wide and searching, ready for a threat that wasn’t there. 

“Just leave me alone,” she said. “You can’t help me, Boyd. If you can’t help me and you won’t let it end, just...just leave me alone.” 

“You want to go back to Purgatory?”

Stiles’s voice startled Boyd for a moment, and it sent Lydia scrambling off the end of the bed, her back to the wall. The whole body flinch that went through the runic mage was difficult to miss, as was the desolation in his spine, the way he couldn’t stand up the rest of the way. 

“If I did, you have no right to stop me!” Erica snarled at him from the bed. 

“You hated me for not pulling you out soon enough. You hate me for not letting you go back. I get your life has been a massive cluster fuck. I get Derek bit you and made you into something you thought would never be touched again. I hate you learned nothing is infallible. I hate it, but Erica? Shut the fuck up because your life wasn’t the only one that wasn’t perfect, alright?” 

The anger there, the rising wrath, was swept away by the broken little noise that seemed to come from Erica’s gut. Tears rolled down her cheeks, stained the collar of the tank top. Stiles held out his hand for the necklace, and Boyd gave it to him, shocked silent. 

“I was selfish last time,” he said softly as he sat on the bed next to her. “I didn’t want to deal with that could have happened, but I did this time, alright? He slipped the necklace over her head, settled the runes against her skin, and as if her strings were cut, Erica sagged into his side. 

“What did you do?” Lydia asked, voice carefully neutral. “What’s is going to cost?” 

“Come on, Cat Woman,” Stiles whispered, laying her flat on the bed. “Time to sleep this one off.” 

Boyd stared, wide eyed as Erica smiled for the first time in weeks. There was none of the tension to her, none of the anxiety that creeped into every inch of her. 

“Stiles?” Lydia asked. He turned toward her, a finger to his lips. He turned back to Erica. 

“Ingwaz,” Stiles muttered, putting his hands together to make a little diamond between them. Nearly immediately, Boyd felt a slow, easy fatigue slip into his bones. Lydia sagged just slightly against the wall. Erica, who Stiles had spoken to, slipped into sleep immediately.

“What’s this cost, Stiles?” Lydia asked, her voice devoid of the edge that had been there. 

“Nothing I haven’t already paid,” he said, a little shrug to his shoulders. “You should get some sleep. You’ve been worrying too much, Lyds.” 

“M’not tired,” she protested, but she went to the bed with only a gentle hand guiding her. Boyd followed unbidden and curled up into the space beside Erica. 

“It’s fixed?” he asked Stiles, who gave him a little shake of his head. 

“It doesn’t matter for a while,” he said instead. “The rest comes with time, but you’re going to have to work through it with her. Nothing’s a quick fix. Nothing’s ever a quick fix.”


	18. Damn the Consequence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Say what? Three? In one day? Alright. That's it for today. I'm totally done.

When Stiles slipped out of the bedroom, he didn’t know what he planned to do. He’d run away from this, from this house and these same problems over and over again, and he still ended up in the same place, worse for wear. He didn’t intend to stumble into Cora, leaning back against the far wall of the hallway. 

“You didn’t have to do any of that,” she said, voice that softness he never would have thought her capable of in the past. 

“No,” he agreed with a shrug. “Right now...right now being of use is…”

“I have a request,” she said when it was clear he couldn’t find the right words. 

“What?” he asked, feeling an exasperated little flare in his chest. He gripped the sharp edges as hard as he could, willed them to bloom into something more than a shadow of feeling. He knew it wouldn’t, knew that the vague feeling of nothingness at the core of him was from the runes, knew that the downward spiral in his mind would turn around in a day or two. It didn’t stop the feeling. 

“I want you to sit down with me, and tell me about the runes. Tell me what they can do, and tell me what they cause.” 

“That’s not going to do anyone any good,” he said, leaning back against the wall. “All it’s going to do is make my dad worry.” 

“You make your dad worry,” she said simply. “You don’t think it’s time someone knew what you were getting up to? We didn’t...we didn’t even know they could make you do things like this, Stiles. If someone knows, then someone can check up on you, know what’s going on, look for warning signs.” 

“Because you think I need a keeper,” he said, though the anger was vague and distant, muted. 

“Because we all need friends,” she said instead. “Do you know how long it took me to admit that I needed a family after losing mine? We don’t have to be your family, Stiles. I don’t know if we could. We have so many problems already, and we’re spread so far...But we can be your friends. If John knows someone’s checking up on you...it would make it easier.” 

“He doesn’t know?” Stiles asked. 

“He doesn’t know,” she agreed. “I’d like it if someone else knew?”

“Not my father,” Stiles repeated. It was important, in his mind. That was the last important thing. There was no reason for John to worry more than he needed. 

“Scott?” she offered, and Stiles shook his head. 

“Lydia?” 

“She doesn’t already know?” Stiles asked, and Cora just shrugged.

“Peter or Chris?” 

“Chris,” Stiles agreed. “Peter might not want me around him right now. Hell, Chris might not want me around him right now.” 

“You said some things,” Cora said with an incline of her head. “We could hear you.” 

“Jesus,” he said, closing his eyes and tapping his head against the wall. 

“It wasn’t you,” she said, laying a hand against his shoulder. Stiles wondered when Cora Hale became emotionally stable. “They understand that.” 

“Peter left like I set his tail on fire,” he bit his tongue. “Jesus, I’m still...I’m sorry-”

“You don’t ever have to apologize to me,” she said. “We...we’re over it, for the most part. Peter...might never be.” 

“We?” Stiles asked, cracking an eye open to look at her. 

“When Peter realized he’d let you play him...his face was hilarious. Derek laughed.” 

“Does Derek know how to laugh?” Stiles asked, though he’d heard it a time or two in his life. 

“Kind of,” Cora said. “We’ll talk in the kitchen. With Erica, Boyd, and Lydia asleep, there’ll be fewer people buzzing in and out.” 

“No Pack to run underfoot?” 

“Jackson’s overseas. Isaac’s downstairs. Danny’s on a business trip. John and Scott are at work.” 

“So, you, Peter, Isaac, Chris, and Derek,” Stiles said on an exhale. “Great.” 

“It won’t be so bad,” she offered. “I’ll meet your downstairs.” 

“You’re not worried I’ll jump out the second story window?” he asked. 

“I know that if you do, I don’t have any right to stop you,” she said instead of answering. “Please come downstairs.” 

Stiles stood in the hallway for a long time. The minutes tripped by as he considered. He’d run from so many things in his life. He’d run from the Pack. He’d run from his father. He’d run from himself a time or two. Standing in the airy hallway of the first floor of the Hale House, he wasn’t sure what he was running from anymore. His emotions muted and distant, the whole of him starving for something he couldn’t touch, he wasn’t sure why he ran at all. 

In the kitchen, Cora, Derek, Isaac, and Chris sat around a breakfast bar. Cora had a pad of paper in front of her, a pen gripped lightly in the tips of her fingers. She was the most relaxed of all of them, sitting next to an empty stool at the end of the bar. 

It was Isaac that pushed the stool out with his foot, gesturing with his eyes to the seat. 

“This is going to take a while,” Stiles cautioned. When no one objected, he went on. “I don’t know what they all do...not yet. Some of them...some of them change?” 

“You’ll tell us what you can,” Derek said, firm and authoritative. There was none of the derision there, though, none of the holier than thou edge Stiles hated in his teens. 

Three hours later, Stiles stared down at a fairly comprehensive list of the runes he’d used, the ones he hadn’t, and the consequences that he’d paid for them in the past. 

“And which ones are you under now?” Cora asked carefully, looking at the list over his shoulder. 

Derek, who had been doing his best to rub knots out of his own neck for the better part of the last hour snapped his head up, eyes narrowing at Stiles. 

“None,” Derek said, as if he could change what was truth by his will. “He’s been in the basement. He’d better not have-”

“Wunjo, Nauthiz, and Ingwaz,” Stiles said, cutting him off. He couldn’t meet the glare the alpha was sending his way. The little, irritated sigh from Isaac, and the way Chris stiffened beside him were telling enough. 

“And what do those do?” Derek asked, voice tight. Stiles didn’t answer, and a moment later, the paper was stolen from in front of him. Cora’s hand was warm on his neck, supportive and more solid than anything in the last week. Chris gave a little whistling intake of breath, and the paper slid over to Derek. A moment later, firm fingers were forcing Stiles’s face upward. 

Derek stared at him, cataloging and looking for something there. It was Chris that spoke. 

“You’ve got a hell of a poker face, kid,” Chris admitted a few minutes later. “How long’s it last?” 

“A few days, unless I repeat them,.” Stiles said with a shrug.

“Which you won’t be doing,” Derek said firmly. “And until that time’s up, you’re on watch.” Stiles debating arguing. He considered, but this was the least damning thing he thought might come of his time in the basement. 

“Me first,” Isaac said simply, hauling Stiles backward off of his stool. Stiles went with little protest. There wasn’t much he could do if a werewolf wanted to manhandle him places.


	19. Innocent Party - Part One Isaac

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no viable excuse for not updating other than life.

Stiles didn’t really care that Isaac was looking at him with the absolute biggest puppy pout that he’d ever seen. He was a grown ass man, and there was no way that he was going to look at big, sad eyes and fold like an origami crane. There just wasn’t. And what self respecting adult male gave puppy dog eyes still? Who does that? 

“What, Isaac?” Stiles asked, carefully searching his pockets for his phone. While there were few people that would call him, the email address attached to it often had a couple hundred new messages a week.

“You should have called me,” Isaac said simply. For all his bluster, Isaac had always been empathetic to the needs and emotions of others. Whether or not he acted like he should for his understanding of those emotions was another story entirely. 

“I wasn’t exactly in my right mind,” Stiles said, hands skimming his back pocket for the tenth time. 

“Before,” Isaac said sternly. “You could have called me before.” 

That brought Stiles up short, the little synapses in his brain firing too quickly for processing. His questing hands stopped their futile search - Chris or Peter would most likely have his phone now. 

“I’m sorry, how was I supposed to call someone that took off overseas because he couldn’t deal?” Stiles asked, the flare of anger in his belly distant and easily snuffed. 

“I left an email,” Isaac said, face sheepish. “I would have checked it. I’d have come back…”

“You’d have jumped a plan from Europe because the human cling-on of your former Pack shot you an email asking you to come home?” Stiles felt the slow, self depreciating slide of something in the back of his mind just as he felt the rabbit quick smack on the back of his head. 

“There’s so much wrong in your head right now because you’re a self sacrificing idiot that I’m not going to even address that right now.” Isaac glared at him before reaching a foot behind his knee and tripping him back onto the sofa. “Sit down. We’re watching Game of Thrones.” 

“Dude…” Stiles bounced on the sofa once, settled in, and curled his feet up underneath him. “If you’re trying to kill me with the emotional shit storm that comes with that show, then just snap my neck.” 

“Contrarily,” Isaac said, tabbing a button on a playstation controller. “Emotionally drained and suicidal is the only way to watch Game of Thrones. Your problems won’t seem nearly as shitty.” 

Stiles couldn’t find a reason to argue.


	20. Chapter Twenty: Innocent Party Part Two: Derek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I'm struggling with writing daily and I have no excuse. Here's the next installment.

Stiles fell asleep sometime between Robert Baratheon’s alcoholism getting him disemboweled and Ned Stark’s honor getting him beheaded. When he woke up, a truly unflattering scene of Petyr Baelish was frozen on the television. Isaac’s snores were light, airy things in the otherwise silent den. 

“He’s started season one nearly a dozen times,” Derek said, startling Stiles from his quiet perusal of the wolf. “He falls asleep every episode, gets lost, and has to start over again.” 

“How do you fall asleep during a raunchy, violence spattered fantasy show?” Stiles asks. 

“Shut up,” Isaac muttered, still half asleep. He rolled over, buried his head in the throw pillow, and resumed snoring. 

“It’s fantasy,” Derek said with a shrug. “It makes problems not seem so terrible.”

“Everyone’s got problems,” Stiles agreed. The vague, aching in his chest was worse now, more buoyant and filling. He was distracted by it until something small struck his chest. His phone sat there, a new crack across the screen, but nothing so terrible that he couldn’t use it. 

“It’s been...buzzing. Constantly.” 

“Emails.” 

“I know.”

“You read them?” 

“Should I have?” Derek asks in that way he has, half challenging and half a threat. Stiles almost smiled at the memory of that tone. 

“Probably,” Stiles admitted. “It’s just work. People send me information about things going on in parts of the country I might not otherwise hear about. Most of it’s shit, but some of it…”

“Some of it is about demons burning children up from the inside?” Derek asked, arching an eyebrow. 

“Hey, look, he knows about demons,” Stiles said, hoping his voice was more joking than condescending. “Most of them are nothing, like I said. Sometimes it’s an accident, sometimes it’s something like we used to have here. Nemetons aren’t as rare as we thought they were in high school, neither are the rest.” 

Derek stared at the paused television screen, jaw working over something he wanted to say. In years past, he wouldn’t have been thinking about it this hard. He’d have just said whatever it was and damn whoever he hurt. It was growth. This was the Alpha John didn’t mind listening to, then, Stiles realized. Derek Hale had grown up. 

“This is your job?” Derek asked at length. 

“Most of the time,” Stiles said with a shrug. “What’s yours?” 

“I...ah...I volunteer at the fire department.” Stiles very nearly lost his shit. 

“You?” Stiles asked, the curiosity, the chagrin building in his chest far more than any other emotion had in the last day. “You, Derek Hale, volunteer at the fire department?”

“I work with John at the station Friday and Saturday nights,” Derek defended, but Stiles didn’t much care what he did outside of the fact that Derek Hale of all people was a mother fucking firefighter.

“No. You, Mr. I-Lived-In-A-Burned-Out-Wreck, put out fires...like...regularly?” 

“Mostly I drive a truck to alarm pulls,” Derek admitted. “I’ve never had to put out a fire.” 

“You…” Stiles slumped into the sofa, hands flung up in the air. 

“It doesn’t make sense to anyone,” Isaac muttered from the couch cushion. “Just accept it and move on.” 

:”Derek Hale puts out fires for a living,” Stiles muttered, the mirth slowly seeping away to leave a vague feeling of amusement in his chest. 

“And apparently Stiles Stilinski is a hunter,” Derek said, and that amusement evaporated. There was a sudden tension in the air, in the muscles of Derek’s shoulders, in Isaac’s spine. 

“Not...a hunter, per say,” Stiles said after it became clear no one else was going to speak. “A supernatural fixer.” 

“And how many of these fixes end up with you killing something, Stiles?” Derek asks, jaw set, eyes critical and watching for any outward signs of deception. Stiles would give him none. 

“Fewer than you’d think,” Stiles said. It was so easy lying to werewolves when you’d had practice lying to things that could actually sift through your thoughts. 

“Lie,” Derek said, and Stiles balked. He hadn’t let his pulse rise. He hadn’t altered his breathing patterns or look in any one direction or another. He hadn’t shifted uneasily. His feet were pointed straight forward. “I watched you grow up, Stiles,” Derek said. “I watched you learn to lie. You don’t think I can’t tell when you’re lying?” 

“A telepath in Fresno told me I had the best poker face she’d ever seen,” Stiles said, raising an eyebrow critically. “If a telepath can’t tell when I’m lying, I call bullshit on your calling me on bullshit.” 

“You never managed to keep your scent from changing when you lie,” Derek said simply. He relaxed back into the sofa, purposefully putting distance between them, if Stiles knew the wolf at all. 

“How does lying smell?” Stiles asked, curious more than annoyed. 

“Sour,” Isaac said, head still buried into the sofa. “You always smelled like Finstock’s windbreaker after five game winning streak.” 

“I did not!” Stiles said, affronted on basic principle more than being caught in the lie. 

“Maybe not as strong,” Derek said, but the little hard edge to his jaw hadn’t faded. Stiles sighed and relaxed into the sofa. There would be no winning the argument that was to come. He glanced at Petyr Baelish’s unfortunately head placement again and figured that at least he wasn’t staring down Cersei Lannister on the rag.


End file.
